Play It Safe

You know what to expect when you see Pavan Duggal’s name in an article. Almost every article on cyber law needs to have a quote by Pavan Duggal. This one is no different:

Does a blogger get to shrug off questions on propriety of content and the like? Journalists never get to do that. The difference perhaps lies in the fact that while a journalist is backed by the newspaper/ channel/ magazine he works for, a blogger has only his own name to hide behind (sometimes not even that-- although a pseudonym is an advantage at times). Journalists are out in broad daylight. Bloggers can choose to stay in the shadows and do the good (or dirty) work. None of this however means that a blogger is beyond the reach of the law.

India has a surprisingly low number of regular bloggers. About 40,000 people, by a rough estimate, post at least three times a week to their blogs. A majority of them are diarists chronicling their own lives. The few who do the journalist thing on their blogs are more or less off the media watchers' radar.